Data Architecture Lead

Application closing date: 15th May 2025
Interviews: week commencing 2nd June 2025
About Our Client
The Government Property Agency
Job Description
Introduction:

Michael Page have exclusively partnered with The Government Property Agency (GPA) to support on their continued Data Transformation programmes. The newly created role of Data Architecture Lead is pivotal in this strategy. The GPA is the largest property holder in government, with more than £2.1 billion in property assets and over 55% of the government's office estate.

The GPA are transforming the way the Civil Service works by creating great places to work, leading the largest commercial office programme in the UK, working towards halving carbon emissions from government offices, and achieving greater value for taxpayers. The team are seeking innovative, solutions-focused people to work on leading transformational programmes such as the Government Hubs Programme, Whitehall Campus Programme and Net Zero Programme, as well as delivering modern, cost-effective real estate service solutions.

Innovation and progress are at the heart of GPA behaviours, fostering a culture of lifelong learning, where curiosity and self-improvement are encouraged. The organisation is dedicated to becoming a leading, inclusive employer both in the external market and throughout the Civil Service. A strong emphasis on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) is not just about driving inclusion across our organisation, it is also about ensuring the services meet the needs of government departments and the civil servants work environments.

Job Overview:

Effective data architecture is an essential component of GPA's overall Enterprise Architecture and the maturity of GPA's data. This role significantly contributes to realising the ambitions for driving efficiencies in property management by helping to fully understand the data estate. This includes creating data models so business owners can better understand data flows, data entities and opportunities to develop end to end processes.
Work locations: Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Swindon, Nottingham or Manchester
Hybrid working arrangement - 2 days per week in the office

Key Responsibilities:

The Data Architect Lead will be responsible for designing and managing GPA's enterprise data models to support design and deployment of business systems:

Design data models and metadata systems
Help Chief Data Architects to interpret an organisation's needs
Provide oversight and advice to other data architects who are designing and producing data artefacts
Design and support the management of data dictionaries
Ensure that the team are working to the standards set for the organisation by the Chief Data Architects
Work with technical architects to make sure that an organisation's systems are designed in accordance with the appropriate data architecture
Line manage a small team of data architects and business analysts
The Successful Applicant
Person Specification / Key Skills Criteria & Qualifications:

As a data driven organisation, a lead data architect is essential to assure data is designed to maximise interoperability between the various systems that create and consume data within GPA. The data architecture lead ensures that the GPA has fully documented data models and data specifications for the use and exchange of data across and to/from the GPA estate. To achieve this, the data architecture lead is able to:

Turn complex data into clear and well understood solutions, which can be acted upon
Work with SMEs such as Business Analysts, Enterprise Architects and Solution Architects to arrive at data architectural solutions
Adopt a methodical and systematic approach to document control
Understand interactions between business analysts and data architects in supporting system design and development
Supervising a team of technical data professionals in a matrix environment

Essential criteria:

Stakeholder management and consensus building
Working in an Agile development environment
Managing a team of data architects and business analysts
Expert understanding of how data architecture contributes to successful system design and operation.
Development and management of conceptual and logical data models
Use and application of formal data modelling patterns such as UML
Understand interactions between business analysts and data architects in supporting system design and development
Familiarity with using CASE tools such as SparxEA, Erwin or similar
Graduate level qualification in computer science, system engineering or similar

Desirable criteria:

Understanding of data privacy and data security concepts and how they are factored into data architectural practices
Work prioritisation and scheduling to time and budget
People training & development
Using Agile development environments such as JIRA
Training on system design practices such as TOGAF and RM-ODP
Gold Standard: IT & Data Management - CITP / CsyP
What's on Offer
28.9% Government Pension Scheme

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